Absent Injury
by alovelyburn
Summary: How much is "too much?" How deep can a blade go, how many nerves can it sever, how many inches of flesh can it rend? Can it hit bone? Cut through? Perhaps it depends on the person — body mass, blood loss. Then again, maybe not. Breaks are sometimes enough, even without a drop of blood. (Griffith-centric, Griffith/Charlotte. GriffithxGuts implications. Canon divergent AU, 4k)


Why'd you sing Hallelujah  
If it means nothing to you?  
Why'd you sing with me at all?  
-Damien Rice-

_It's said that some of the worst injuries come in the absence of pain - that when a body experiences too much, it simply shuts down that sensation to spare itself the shock._

_Of course, that begs the question, how much is "too much?" How deep can a blade go, how many nerves can it sever, how many inches of flesh can it rend? Can it hit bone? Cut through? Perhaps it depends on the person - body mass, blood loss. Then again, maybe not. Breaks are sometimes enough, even without a drop of blood._

* * *

As a general rule, Griffith isn't much of a daydreamer.

That isn't to say, of course, that he doesn't dream. In some ways you could even say that's all he ever does. But his attention is also fairly level: address the issue at hand, move on. Today, for example (or rather, right now), he should be signing documents. And there are so many documents to sign.

But he can't focus. His head is full, instead, of the scent of grass and clear air - the world outside the endlessly expansive city walls. And he remembers bathing in rivers and well water and fighting with- yes, he remembers fighting with Guts, always fighting with Guts. Thrown buckets and splashing blood. Broken swords, lying in snow. Somehow, the image always circles back to that.

But he looks up, and it's almost mid-day; he can tell by the low hang of the sun in the sky. And the image of that sword is clear enough in his head that he doesn't regret the tap at his door, even when he knows that means he's running late, and that it's time to go.

"Enter," he says in that most official of voices, and looks up when Casca does as requested. "I know. I should have finished with these. I know, there are cases to adjudicate..."

Casca tips her head forward. "Some are serious."

"Some," Griffith says, because yes, it's only ever some. The rest are always foolish - issues of pride, more than honor. Issues of greed rather than fairness. It's the nature of people, isn't it? He tries not to think that, really - tries not to assume the worst of people just like he tries not to assume the worst of himself. But it's just... _challenging_. It's only ever been challenging. "You didn't have to come, yourself." She has other duties, after all, though leading armies is far less demanding during times of peace. But even when he says it, he knows the truth. Of course she would come. She likely stopped a servant and told them she would be the one to collect him. After all, she's the only one he really listens to. Aside from Charlotte, of course.

And so, through the halls. It takes him a moment to ready himself - the splendour of his office sits oddly on shoulders as narrow as his (strange - he'd never thought of himself as small), and he's always disliked that crown... even sitting on the previous King's brow it looked absurd. But positions have their requirements, and a king without finery is too easily taken for a fool. And Griffith is no fool. He still keeps Foss close enough to count each breath.

Griffith sits in his throne, and he listens. He listens to stories about cows gone missing and jewellery gone astray. He listens to poor men demand higher earnings, and rich men who claim their terms were unreasonably demanding to begin with. He can check his own opinions, sometimes, against the tension in Casca's breathing, and the low (almost inaudible) click of her tongue when something is too unbearably stupid to be believed. That comes up a great deal. From there, it's a question of trying to remain objective - looking at the situation, weighing the options.

It isn't difficult, but sometimes it's trying. Griffith has never enjoyed tolerating the inequalities of the world. That, if nothing else, makes him a strange fit for a crown... but of course, it's the ill-fitting pieces that are best suited for some slots. Indeed, isn't that the reason he wanted to rise through the ranks of society to begin with? A revolution, he thought, at the time. If he could reach the pinnacle of that corrupt system, he could change things from within.

He can, of course. Society resists, but it can't resist him. Even so... it's hard to keep that goal in sight, now when the palace has grown so dim, and everywhere he looks is... snow.

Daydreaming again. Griffith snaps to attention. His body hasn't moved, his expression hasn't altered to betray his disinterest. Pay attention. Listen to the landed man who feels cheated by the jug of milk the peasant stole from him while working the fields. Listen, and try not to betray his disgust.

_In time, things will change._ This is the story he tells himself, and it makes him care, a little.

...strange. It wasn't always like this, was it? He used to care so much.

When cases are settled for the day, Griffith takes his leave of court. Casca walks with him along with his personal guards, ever mindful of his safety, even in the well-patrolled corridors of Windham. She keeps her gaze trained forward, like the guards that surround him... but even so, she walks at his side with greater comfort than most. At the door to his chamber, she bows lightly, and calls him "majesty," in that way she only does in front of others - during times when their years of camaraderie means less than appearances.

Griffith nods his head and turns to leave. As he does, Casca clears her throat. And she pauses for a moment before saying, "Have you heard the whispers about that tournament... the one scheduled for next week?"

"Ah. Yes?" A glance over his shoulder, back at Casca's face. "I think it's a few days ride away?"

"Yes," she says. "Someone new has signed up to participate. I've heard he's very strong." A breath, then. Casca looks away. "I've heard he wields... quite an impressive sword."

* * *

Guts left him in the dead of winter. All this time, and Griffith still doesn't know why. Sometimes he wonders if he's blocked something out but no, he's sure he remembers this: the frantic knocking at his door, and Casca's panicked face. Pulling his coat on over his simple house clothes - a tunic, breeches. He wasn't prepared to trek out into that snow, and he wasn't entirely sure he believed her story even as he danced to its rhythm. He remembers that, clearly - the sense of disbelief, as though he had told her that God himself had descended from the sky. No, that was more believable - after all, he'd once met a demon.

He remembers everything, yes. The crunch of hardened snow beneath his polished boots, and the gentle rustle of his clothes. The sting of cold air in his lungs, the fog that drifted on his breath.

And he remembers that there was no reason - no explanation. Guts was there, and then he was gone, his footsteps retreating past the ring of trees that surrounded them, past the shadows of the forest. Griffith heard those footsteps, like his own jagged breath, and though he didn't see the man's back disappear... it wasn't difficult to imagine. Those broad shoulders, and his red cloak. And he left behind everything he'd been given by the Hawks - even his helmet and breastplate, though they had rarely served him well anyway.

Most importantly, he'd left Griffith kneeling in the snow. Griffith, whose eyes were blinded by the moonlight on silver, on steel. Who was deafened by the sound of those footsteps. Griffith, who remembers Casca after her colleague's retreating back.

(Was there a note of desperation in her voice, or is his memory playing tricks on him? No, there was. He hadn't thought much of it at the time, but in retrospect... he wonders. Not that it matters. Whether you're the one screaming aloud or the one screaming in silence... gone is still just as gone.)

It was winter then, yes. Inside Griffith, it was never Spring again.

* * *

The night will be long and full of demands: there is a ball to attend welcoming envoys from Chuder, for example. A risky choice to be sure, inviting them in... but he's open-minded. No one wants another war between the two nations, not with the Kushan emperor gathering his power in the East.

_Now is not the time for old rivalries_, the message had said when it arrived in Griffith's hands. _Now is the time to take our war-torn nations and join them together to stave off the threat of a greater enemy still._ It's a good enough argument, and truth be told, Griffith has no particular dislike of Chuder. Even so, he'll have watchful guards, and he'll pour his own wine.

But all of that is for later. For the moment, he chooses to spend the next hour or two reading on his lounge. On hand, an assortment of things: Biology. History. Storybooks and poetry. He opens one book and then another, but for some reason, he can't quite connect to the words.

(For some reason, he says, but no. Of course he knows the reason.)

He finds himself thinking about blood. Specifically, the way it spreads through water - little tendrils, at first, dispersing slowly, like a red mist. Like tentacles. The thought of it makes him clutch his behelit, though he doesn't know for certain why. But there's an image - blood in a wooden bucket, and his hands stained and rubbed raw from wringing clothes.

...it wasn't so long ago. It was... the night Julius died. Griffith wiped the bloodstains from Guts' arms in the quiet of his kitchen, and there was something strange, even then, about the air between them. He sees this now, in retrospect. Because Guts was frequently quiet, but he was never so silent, and his eyes never so distant, so bleak. Guts had always burned - hot with passions, with rage, with dedication. But that night, it was as though someone blew out the flame inside him, and he was so, so still.

_He's tired_, Griffith told himself, and cleaned the wound from a guard's arrow. Tired made sense, after all - tired and suffering from minor injuries. Blood and water dripped onto Griffith's clothes, but it didn't much matter. He could always buy another shirt.

Griffith said, "I'm sorry about Adonis," though he wasn't sure he meant it. It wasn't calculated (was it?) - he didn't know (right?). He couldn't have predicted that boy would be there. And yet-

"Wasn't your fault." Guts lifted his head, and yes, he did look tired. "I'm the one who goes around swinging at everything - not thinking. Doing things just to do them."

Griffith laughed a little, very quietly, and shook his head. "Well, we don't all preplan things."

And Guts said, "You do."

"Yes." Griffith squeezed the last of the water from the rag in his hands. Scarlet water dripped between his fingers. "I suppose we're simply different that way."

At the time, Guts gave him the strangest face. And-

-Charlotte comes into the room with the gentle click of the door, and then the flutter of petticoats and heavy cloth. In the late-afternoon light, her hair is golden-brown and her face flushed with energy from her day's activities. She usually looks like that. He thinks of her as a butterfly, sometimes, the way she flutters from place to place. Today, her dress is gold and black, too, like the wings of a monarch.

"Griffith!" Charlotte launches herself at him, and he half stumbles to accept her embrace, still more lying down than sitting up. "I hope you're ready for tonight. I know it's a little exhausting - it's exhausting for me too, just thinking about it! But-"

Grffith smiles, softly, and his hands rest on her shoulders. "I'll be ready."

Charlotte's smile is like sunlight, sometimes. "You always are," she says just before she flutters away.

It was her idea to actually accept diplomatic relations with Chuder. Or rather, though Griffith had a similar thought, she was nonetheless the first to say it. That was probably for the best. Much of the aristocracy would have argued long and loud against such an idea if it came from their Outsider monarch.

Charlotte stands by the windows now, surrounded by light drapery, by the golden sunlight. Her hand presses lightly against the glass, and Griffith thinks... she's beautiful. And intelligent. She's wise, and strong. Despite her energy, despite her youth, she should never be taken for a political lightweight. She is a queen, and her mind is as clear and sharp as her father's ever was. He thinks this because he knows this - he knows his wife is an asset, is a marvel.

He knows.

And he reminds himself of it when he sets his books aside, joins her at the window. Below them, the garden stretches toward the palace walls, and he can see the stairs where he first touched her - reached out to keep her from falling. And he can see the ledge, too, above that. The ledge where-

"Griffith?" Charlotte leans her head on his shoulder, a tiny, endless weight. "Are you... all right? You seem..."

_Strange_. He finishes her sentence in his head. _Absent?_

"It's like you're here, but you aren't really here."

He smiles, softly. "I'm here. You see?" And his fingers find her fingers, and entwine them together. Her skin is warm like the sunlight, like her smiles, and he presses their hands to his heart. Below their skin, below his silken tunic, below the cage of ribs and flesh, he feels his own heart thumping. "Still here." She watches him, eyes wide. Unconvinced. But she doesn't speak again, only lifts herself on her toes and kisses him... just as she has a million times before. Her mouth, her lips, her breath, they are as familiar to him as his own. And something is gnawing at him, but she is here, and so he is, and there are hours before the ambassador's ball begins.

* * *

As a young child, he couldn't stand the dark.

No child does, of course. That's where the predators crawl - the monsters in the shadows, and the humans in the shadowed alleyways. Both waited to strike when the moment was right. That's the way it is in the slums and in the palace corridors. That's the way it always has been. And because of that, his mother always kept a candle by his bedside. When he slept, he kept it lit all night. On those days when he slept there.

His mother didn't complain, though the room they shared was small, and she may have been disturbed. And... sometimes, he woke to find it flickered out and cold - sometimes burned down. But that was morning, and it no longer mattered. Only that, at night, when he closed his eyes, he could still see the dancing flames in his mind, and feel that candle's fragile warmth trickling over him . Keeping the goblins away.

On days when his mother's "companions" followed her home instead of the other way around, he would sleep in abandoned buildings instead. Those men, most of them didn't like having a boy child around. Some of them did. It was the latter group that worried him more. On those nights, he would leave even more quickly, hand curved around the candle, letting it lead his way through the cobblestone roads.

The alleyways were warzones, back then - thieves and predators, rats and crawling things the size of his hand. Griffith knew which twists led to which buildings, and he knew which ones were abandoned, and which had squatters. He knew which squatters would rob an infant and which would offer a portion of their own meager meal to those even needier than them. He would curl with the latter, a group of cold, motherless boys gathered around that flame. And he wasn't motherless, really, only temporarily, but they accepted him all the same. And, together, they would wait for dawn to bring back the light.

One day, he went to market. His mother was... out. Still out from the previous night - an evening spent with a companion who liked his privacy, as much as he didn't like the slums. It was morning, that day, and bright as it ever was inside the shadow of the surrounding buildings., so he wasn't afraid. She said she'd be back by noon.

There was something wrong in the air when Griffith returned from his trip, The room was bright and sunny, it was gold light and warmth, and it was all empty and as cold as his burnt out candle. Nothing had changed, and yet... everything was different. Somehow, he knew he was the only one that lived there.

A few weeks later, he left behind that empty room and fled to the buildings that had been his second home. He was motherless, too, now - an initiate into the ranks of the abandoned, or the orphaned... though he would never find out which.

He left his candle behind.

* * *

(Charlotte doesn't know that world. She doesn't know that life. Her days have always been corridors and banquet halls. She's never worried about the light dying out.)

* * *

Griffith wakes in the dusk near darkness, Charlotte at his side and a firm knock rattling the door. For a moment he forgets where he is, lost inside the strangeness of his memories. But a few moments, and a robe, later, he is meeting with Rickert in the gloom by the doorway. He glances at the standing clock before he opens the door. In one hour, the ball will begin.

"I have a report." Rickert says with a little breath when the door opens to greet him. He fumbles through the sack strapped over his shoulder. He's older now, but still a child in many way, at least in Griffith's eyes. Maybe that's unfair. It's always difficult to see how much people change. In any case, he sets the bag down, and shoves a rolled up piece of parchment in Griffith's direction.

Griffith holds his hand up to calm the nearby guards. It's never wise to make sudden movements in the presence of one's monarch.

The parchment is dry and rough under his fingers, and he doesn't unroll it. He just lets Rickert speak.

"I saw him," Rickert says, voice dancing, face alight. "He must have been getting ready for that tournament - there he was, just swinging his sword, just like usual. He's the same as he always was."

Griffith raises his gaze and thinks, _The Same, maybe. But no longer mine._

Then again, maybe that's the same, too.

Rickert says, "...I know you told me not to, but I went over to say hello."

Griffith's hands grip the parchment.

"He was glad to see me. He wasn't mad at all." Rickert says this with a smile. Griffith feels... ill.

Rickert says, "Maybe you should talk to him? I bet he'd want to talk to you."

One hour until the ball. One hour, and Griffith's head is full of nothing but red on white, red in water. His ears are full of shattering steel.

* * *

It's often been said that Griffith is a war leader - a soldier. And that's true. But it's also not true.

Griffith is a politician. Born in the gutter, he saw the light of the palace and determined to go there - determined that he would do anything to achieve that simple, impossible goal - that idealistic dream. For one of his background, that meant only one route - war. And so he trained, and so he learned. He learned to speak and to navigate the world. He learned how to play with blades the way a composer plays with instruments, and he made war into his symphony. It is in this way that he who was born a street rat, grey and stained by the dirt of city backalleys, rose from the ground to become a white hawk.

Along the way, of course, he learned other things, too.

He learned to smooth situations, and to pretend all was well when his insides were frayed. It is for that reason, and that reason only, that he manages to emerge from the ballroom intact. There will be treaties soon - drawn up within a fortnight - and marriage alliances will be discussed. Someone will leave home one day - Griffith's second child perhaps, or perhaps a Chuderan prince of lower rank. Families will merge, families will form.

That is the way of royalty, he knows. He wonders if it would be so easy to sign his children away if he'd had any yet.

And he should be celebrating, but he's not. Instead, Griffith stands under the starlight, looking over the garden. His fingers run along the banister and he thinks, _I leaned here, once. I answered his questions with questions_. He wonders if that was truly... fair. Of course, that's less relevant than it ought to be. Many things are unfair, after all. Adonis' death was unfair, he knows that. And the way Guts left him behind. And so many things are left to fate, or to chance. What was it, he wonders, that helped him escape that day - the day after Charlotte's maid reported them to the King? What made him leave through the maid's quarters instead of Charlotte's window, as he had come?

What spared him the King's wrath? And was it _fair_ that he was spared? That the maid landed in the dungeon in his place?

Was it destiny that acted, then, to protect him?

Is this the way things were meant to be?

….Griffith closes his eyes and lets the breeze embrace him, cool and soothing. It carries the scent of flowers and fruit trees even at night.

That's how the messenger finds him. And any inclination Griffith has toward wondering why a man is approaching him alone at night - how any man would have such courage these days - flitters away when the man opens his mouth and says, "Guts sent me."

Griffith stares at him. Under his feet, the earth is falling away.

"I... beg your pardon for approaching this way, your highness. He told me where to go. He told me where to find you. He said, _Just go up to him and don't_-"

"_Don't bother with the guards_." Griffith's voice is quiet. His heart pounds, pounds.

The messenger smiles his sheepish young man smile. "Yeah. I mean, yes. Your highness. He said... to tell you he wants to meet. And that it's been too long. Uh, there's some other things, too. I mean, there are other things. Sorry. Your highness. He... said..."

The messenger adjusts his hand, nervously, between his hands. And Griffith focuses on the sky while the messenger speaks - the diamond dust sparkles of the stars, the cottony wisps of cloud. In the center of the sky, there is a spot - starless, cloudless, dark like the shadow of wings. Even now, he can't feel anything.

"Your highness," the messenger says, "What should I tell him?"

Griffith closes his eyes.

_Is this the way things were meant to be?_

The messenger clears his throat a little.

"Your highness?"

* * *

This was a late birthday present to Gyo (gin-kyo here) - and accordingly inspired by several of her beautiful drawings/digital paintings!


End file.
